Family Trees

Friday 27 February 2009

Preston Mill Girls

I have been helping a friend to discover more about one of his ancestors, Christopher Holt. In 1851 Christopher lived at 61 Maudland Bank, Preston and was gainfully employed as the manager of a cotton mill. According to the obituary notice in the online collection of 19th Century British Library Newspapers, April 1862, Christopher was formerly manager for the late John Paley, Esq., cotton spinner.

A lot of midnight oil was burned as I followed the story of John Paley, backwards through the digitised pages of the newspapers, from his death in 1857 to just before the death of his father, John Paley Snr, in 1855.

Whilst I read these fascinating accounts I had, in my mind’s eye, the picture of Victorian mill girls which was featured in Jeremy Paxman’s series ‘The Victorians’ on BBC television a couple of weeks ago. The painting* had long been a favourite of mine since it graced the cover of my Penguin paperback copy of ‘North and South’ by Elizabeth Gaskell. (That book, incidentally, I bought new in 1974 for the cover price of 60p). I loved the colours and the composition of the painting; warm ochres and terracotta colours brightened with the white aprons of the girls and cooled with the calming blues of their striped skirts. Such care-free times for those girls, depicted in sharp contrast to the usual dark and grimy scenes of industrial Manchester and Salford. Jeremy Paxton had commented that in this portrait of industrial Britain all the workers seemed to have a full set of fingers, there was not a speck of dirt on their clothes or their faces and only little wisps of smoke issued from the mill chimneys. This was all in stark contrast to images portrayed by contemporary writers who wanted to expose the dirty and dangerous working and living conditions of the mill hands.

What were the mill girls’ working conditions in Preston in the 1850s and what kind of mill manager was Christopher Holt? Was he an ancestor ‘to be proud of’ or one to ‘sweep under the carpet’ of history? Reading through those newspapers I discovered much about John Paley Jnr, the mill owner. The earlier commercial successes that he and his father had enjoyed had given them the opportunity to partake in the social and local government aspects of Preston life; both had been Aldermen and Mayor, and both seemed to have been liked and respected by their employees.

I discovered that Christopher Holt was probably the mill manager at John Paley & Co, of Heatley Street, Preston. The business had been founded by John Paley Snr who had been a joiner for Mr Horrocks before turning his talents to machine making and eventually buying a mill of his own. In 1841 Christopher was also a machine maker – was he working for John Paley at this time?

John Paley Jnr was elected Mayor of Preston in 1846; a subscription had been arranged (no donation was to be greater than two shillings per person) and there was sufficient money to buy a massive silver snuff box for the Mayor, a gold cameo brooch for his Mayoress and to decorate the Exchange rooms and lay on a tea for at least 1200 guests – many of them employees of John Paley. One of the banners proclaimed “John Paley Jnr. Esq., Mayor; May he long live in the hearts of his workpeople, honoured and esteemed by his townsmen.” Another banner honoured John Paley Snr (who had also served as Mayor) with “May he long live to enjoy the reward of his industry and enterprise, wishing him and his family health and happiness.”

After the tea, space was cleared, a stage made, and the speeches began. The chair was taken by Christopher Holt – suggesting that he was now the mill manager – and Christopher gave a very well-received, short speech relating how the subscriptions had been collected and how the workpeople held Mr and Mrs Paley in great esteem and affection. He mentioned the scientific advancements that were being made which, together with the continuation of mutual respect between the workers and the employers in the district, would lead to improvements of every kind in trade as well as improvements in mechanism.

Another report tells of the annual treat for the mill hands of all the Preston mills in 1856. Five hundred of the hands of John Paley & Co gathered at 5.30 a.m. in the yard of Heatley Street Mills and went in procession, led by the Third Royal Militia Band, to the Maudland Railway Station where they boarded a train for Fleetwood. Lunch and tea were provided at the Market Hall (though the manager and the overlookers lunched at the Victoria Hotel) and the day was given over to festivities and games which were enjoyed by all.

Of course, good times rarely last for long, and the cotton famine was looming. Until then, trade was probably conducive to good labour relations and mill owners, such as John Paley, could profitably run a benevolent and well disciplined mill. At this time Horrocks and others guaranteed employment for their hands, whatever the state of trade (Ten Per Cent and No Surrender, Dutton, King 1981) and there were other employers, such as Robert Owen and Kay-Shuttleworth, who advocated a more philanthropic approach to business matters.

Christopher Holt, I surmise, was fortunate in a number of ways; he was forward-looking and trained in the new craft of machine making; he was of good character and seemed to earn the respect of his employers and of his hands and he had the wit and intelligence to make a good speech in front of a crowd of over a thousand people. But times were changing – how were Christopher and John Paley to fare?

John Paley Snr retired before the deterioration of trade really set in and it was John Paley Jnr who had to put forward a reduction of wages to his workers. Although there was opposition to the wage cuts, they were carried through and, in some cases, the hands voted to accept cuts rather than lose their jobs. The market reports in the Liverpool newspapers tell of very quiet times, with much reduced trade. John Paley Snr died in 1855, at which time John Paley Jnr was suffering from the results of some serious losses of fortune resulting from some ‘untoward undertakings’ and also from deteriorating health. The newspapers show that between 1855 and 1857 John Paley Jnr’s extensive property holdings were all sold; the contents of the mill were auctioned and, finally, his life policy (for £5,000 plus accumulated bonuses) was also sold – the latter occurred just before his death in 1857.

When John Paley Jnr died, the Preston Guardian published a long and detailed obituary, culminating in a list of mourners and the order of the procession, which was akin to a state funeral, such was the affection held for the Paley family.

Christopher Holt probably found himself unemployed and eager not to be one of the fourteen families, previously employed by John Paley & Co, which were now suffering severely the ‘pinches of poverty’ and for whom the newspaper called on the people of the town to raise a subscription to ease their sufferings. In 1861 Christopher Holt is living at Mayes Street, near Victoria Station in Manchester. He is a mill manager and, married for the second time, has a new young family to feed. He has travelled far to find employment, away from his family and his friends to the crowded, soot covered terraces and factories of this huge city. A year later he died, at Blackburn, and was buried at Preston. His ‘obituary’ in the personal notices section of the newspaper simply says

“On the 30th ult. at Burnley, Mr Christopher Holt, formerly manager for the late John Paley Esq., cotton spinner, of this town, aged 60.”

*'The Dinner Hour: Wigan' was painted by Eyre Crow in 1874

(c) Hilary Belton 2009

Tuesday 10 February 2009

John Salthouse, Liverpool ship owner in 1754

Salford Local History Library has a good collection of books relating to the North West generally as well as a good collection of records pertaining, as you would expect, to Salford. The books that I like to look through are part of a series purchased by subscription many years ago and, as such, some volumes relate to places a little further afield, such as Liverpool and Cheshire.

On my visit last week I found a book which records letters sent to the Customs House in Liverpool in the eighteenth century. Fortunately these books are well indexed and I quickly found a reference to John Salthouse, who was part owner of the 'Bee', a square-sterned snow of 45 tons, built at Liverpool in 1752; the master was John Newton. This is the account of the 'Bee's' activities sometime after the letter was written, included in the book as a footnote:

"The Bee, the third of Newton’s Liverpool ships, had been built and fitted out by Mannesty for the notorious slave captain, the “Old Blasphemer”. Newton, however, was taken suddenly ill and had to resign command the day before she sailed. On this, her maiden voyage, she was cut off by the slaves and run ashore, and the master mate and surgeon were all killed. Newton joined the Customs service in Liverpool, and later the church, to become the noted evangelist, slaver reformer and, with poor Cowper, the author of the Olney hymns".

I have no idea, yet, whether this John Salthouse is related to my family and, whilst preferring not to be associated with a slaving ship, history cannot be re-written. The stories of my ancestors, whatever those stories may turn out to be, are stories of their lives, not of my life.